Practice 4
Creating a menu of packs

In this last exercise we will make an activity pack that can be used as an access menu to all the packs made in the course. The menu will be saved in the course root directory and will open the packs from each of their folders.

- Go to File - New... - Association. In this case will use the root directory of the course modules as the working directory: C:\Clic\Course

- Change the type to Information screen.

- Make sure that Text is selected for grid A and click on Edit contents. The programme will ask for a name for the new text file, which could be MENU.TXT

- Write the following text in the Windows Notepad:

Planets{module1\practice\planetes.pac}
Animals{module2\practice\animals.pac}
Solidarity{module3\practice\intermon.pac}
Mental arithmetic{module4\practice\calcul1.pac}

Note that when the packs are in different folders, you also have to give their path or Clic would not be able to find them.

- Close Notepad and say Yes to save the changes.

- Set a layout of 1 column and 4 rows.

- Write the following in Welcome message:

Clic course practices

- Click on the Options button and set the size of grid A at 400x80. Unmark the three counters and the Shaded frames, select Small buttons 2 and change the main window and game window colour to blue.

- Accept the changes in Options and click on the Fonts button. Select Arial at 11 x 26, mark the Bold and Shadow buttons and change the following colours: Text to white, Background to blue and Shadow to black. When you have made all these changes click on the Apply to all areas button.

- Accept everything and, before clicking on any of the cells, save the activity as MENU.ASS.

- Go to the File - New... - Activity pack menu. The working directory stays as C:\Clic\Course

- Put the MENU.ASS activity as the single component, accept and save the pack as COURSE.PAC

Now we can link each pack to the menu so that the menu appears when a pack is finished with:

- Click on the first cell, where it says "Planets". If everything goes well, the pack we created in the first session should open.

- Activate the activity pack edition (CTRL+P) and click on the Threading button. Mark the Default threading box and, in the box below, write:

..\..\Course.pac

  The expression "..\..\" tells Clic to go back by two folders to find "Course.pac". We have to do this as "planets.pac" is in the C:\Clic\Course\Module1\practice folder and the menu is in C:\Clic\Course.

- Accept everything and save the pack with the same name and in the same place.

- Go through the activities in the "Planets" pack. When you finish, the programme should go back to the main menu.

- Repeat the same steps with the "Animals" and "Solidarity" packs. The default threading in both cases will also be ..\..\Course.pac

The mental arithmetic pack is a little more complicated. As it already has its own links, we will have to find a way linking it without breaking its own links:

- Go to File - Open and find FINAL.PAC in the Modul4\practice folder.

- Edit the activity pack and give it a default threading to ..\..\Course.pac

- Save the pack, click on the forward button to reach the menu and see what happens. All the exercises have to be solved to leave the "Mental arithmetic" branch and go back to the menu, if not, the inferior threading is activated and will repeat the exercises.

To finish, create a Windows icon that opens the activity pack we have just made:

- Right click on the Start button in Windows.

- Select Explore from the menu. This will open Explorer.

- Look for the Clic folder in Program files and select it.

- Right click on a blank space in the right panel of Explorer.

- Select New... and Shortcut. The shortcut assistant will open.

- Write C:\Clic\Course\Course.pac on the command line and go to the next screen.

- Write Clic course practices in shortcut name.

- Accept everything, close Explorer and test the icon, which should appear in the Start - Program files - Clic menu.

Extra exercise

The English puzzle pack has not been included in the menu because it is in the compact format (PCC) and this stops us from making changes to the pack. To add it to the menu, we need to separate ANIPUZEN.PCC with ClicPac, change MENU.ASS to increase the number of rows to 4, add an extra line in MENU.TXT and set the return threading from ANIPUZEN.PAC to COURSE.PAC. Remember that this pack is one level deeper in the folder structure: C:\Clic\Course\Module4\practice\Animals. Therefore the return path should be "..\..\..\course.pac".